I grew up in football country in rural Pennsylvania. My training flung me to Caltech (B.S. 1986), U. of Colorado at Boulder (Ph.D. 1991), and the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge UK (postdoc, 1992-95). I was a faculty member and Hughes investigator in Genetics at the Washington University School of Medicine in Saint Louis before moving the lab to Janelia Farm in 2006 as one of the Farm's first scientists. I have two young daughters, Fio and Coro, with my wife and colleague Elena Rivas. Trained as an experimental biologist at the bench, but now spending my time coding at the computer, I substitute for the pleasures of wet work by cooking at home. I also read, play soccer and pickup basketball, and go running on the Farm's lovely and malarial Selden Island along the Potomac River.